for flouting hospital 'no sibling' rule for ebf baby?

[StarlightMcKenzie]

DS had an operation yesterday. He needed me to be there. Breastfed baby also needed me.

I took my Aunt to look after my ds and we were sent initially to a waiting room. The plan was for her to keep him there and for me to pop out of the ward to feed him.

However, we were there for half an hour and my ds started to ask for a feed, so I started to bf. Literally 2 sucks in, we were called. I pulled him off and he screamed so I jigged him about (which quietens him as a distraction) and moved towards the ward with him in tow.

The nurse told me he wasn't allowed. I told her that I needed to finish his feed and then I would take him back to my aunt. I offered to vrubg ds ub 10 mins but she got arsey saying that ds would have to have his operation cancelled if he missed his slpt. Nurse started tutting about him disturbing the other patients and that there was a strict no-sibling rule that I knew about as it was in the letter (it was).

so WIBU?

Read the thread kinky It;s all there.

Bye

She couldn't go through with him because she wasn't next of kin?

Then you should have stopped the feed.

Before you ask, yes, i have breast fed 3 DCs.

Oh and bye.

It's not there at all. It's full of "maybe"s and "perhaps"s. All ambiguity and inconsistency.

You can't get all butthurt about people doubting you when you've admitted you use MN as a plaything.

Thanks for clarifying before you left, OP. I think we all know now.

Oh and i meant ask the nurse if YOU could sign the forms in the waiting room while you finished the feed and the Aunt went through with your DS for the first few minutes. Just to be clear.

Nefertarii - most people on MN know that Star's DS has Autism. She didn't explain it at the start because it is just part of everyday life for her. To you it might be a 'drip feed', to Star it is just pointing out WHY she had to go right into theatre. Because that IS unusual.

My DS2 had to have a tooth out under GA because his sensory issues through his Autism meant that the dentist couldn't do it (he tried twice). I was allowed to take my EBF, bottle refusing 7 month old onto the ward AND into the recovery area. The only place I couldn't take him was theatre.

I had issues with expressing, so that was out, and he is anaphylactic to dairy, so formula was out, and because I was ebf at the time, DS3 wasn't being prescribed a hypoallergenic milk replacement.

But I didn't have to ask. The nurse asked if he was bf, and that was that.

I think the hospital's policy is wrong in Star's case tbh. Star did everything possible by bringing her Aunt - but if a baby is truly demand fed, you don't 'time' feeds, you feed whenever they are hungry. And if a baby isn't used to waiting, it will cause that baby distress. Raising cortisol levels and altering the brain chemistry.

So please stop attacking Star for her feeding choices - she has made exactly the same choices that I have, and done her best.

And fwiw, I didn't wean DS3 until he was almost 8mo either, as he wasn't ready. The WHO guidelines are exclusive BF until 6mo, then slow weaning whilst continuing to bf until at least 2yo.

Star seriously,give it up. Your ds is not ebf. Give him an ellas kitchen pouch instead of milk if you absolutely could not wake him.
Btw what time were you at the hospital?

Just saying!

So could your Aunt or your Mum not have "bought you a couple of hours by bouncing him around"?

Star seriously "rights".

We're talking about a busy cash strapped hospital trying to get as many needy kids through dangerous anaesthetic procedures as quickly and safely as possible. The rights of those kids and what works best for doctors and nurses trump the need of your child 100 fold.They bend the rules for you then somebody else and then before you know it 10 mins as turned into 40 and some child has missed a much needed op.

As I said thousands of babies have to wait 10 minutes for a feed daily,multiples,babies in large families etc. They don't melt. A one off is neither here nor there particularly for such a large baby eating pouches and who is plenty old enough to have a bit of expressed milk in a cup if he really isn't capable of waiting 10 mins.What is the worse that can append-he cried for a couple of minutes ?

This is the biggest non thread I've seen in a looooooong time.

Well said sirzy!

There are rules for a reason, however there are times when common sense comes into play
Well i wish you'd used your common sense OP.
Your OP is a totally immature rant. Am afraid YABU

There is so much irrelevant crap on this thread it is unbelievable. Going to theatre is irrelevant, what the OP does on the school run is irrevelant, why she couldn't plan feeds to avoid being in this situation is irrelevant as is the precise timing of every moment of the visit.

The fact is a hungry baby got a couple of sucks for a feed and then had to be given to somebody else. Any baby who had been given the breast (or a bottle for that matter) and had it whisked away like that is going to go ape shit and disturb anybody in a fairly wide radius. A rice cake or any solid food isn't going to help, another drink won't work. You can't time bf that precisely that you could have anticipated the random arrival of a nurse and bf beforehand. If a baby didn't want to feed earlier it won't. You can't 'fix' a baby's feeds every time to your own timetable. I know I have tried. Sometimes it works, often it doesn't.

If the reason for the ban on siblings is space then I fail to see how a baby on a mother's lap is any more in the way than the mother who is sitting there without a baby. If the real problem is infection control then the hospital should have said and not tried to pretend it was something else. That makes no sense to me at all - surely people are more likely to take infection control seriously than lack of space and so are less likely to flout the rules. Smacks of covering up, like they don't want people to think they have infection control issues.

OP YANBU for wanting to continue the feed. YANBU to hoping that the nurse would understand that babies deprived of a feed after a few sucks would go ape shit or at least would have been accommodating without the attitude when the situation was explained. YANBU not to know exactly when people will be coming for you and how long every tiny part of the process would take. Hospitals are big, processes are complicated and lots of people are involved. If you had asked exactly what was happening and when I doubt you would have got an accurate answer or the same answer twice. Therefore YANBU to have tried but failed to have a plan in place.

I do think YWBU to complain to the hospital or make a big deal out of it though. It was an unfortuate set of circumstances and I think you should let it go unless you plan merely to share your experiences rather than have a pop at them.

I take comfort from SauvignonBlanc's posts that some hospitals wouldn't have let this situation occur in the first place.

The OP doesn't have a crystal ball. She obviously had to leave the house earlier than her baby normally has it's first feed, in order to be at the hospital on time.

She tried to bf her baby before leaving, but the baby wouldn't bf. There is no way you can 'force' a demand-fed bf baby to feed if they are not ready for a feed. They just won't feed. What was she supposed to do, shove her nipple in the baby's mouth, squeeze until milk came out, and hold the baby's nose until he swallowed FFS?!

Is that seriously what you are all saying?!

She did what she could - she left her 4yo DD AT HOME with her mum. She brought her Aunt who lives quite a way away to look after the baby.

She obviously didn't go there WITH the intention of taking the baby on the ward, or she wouldn't have bothered to arrange for her Aunt to look after him in the waiting room.

They were waiting a while in the waiting room, baby woke up and wanted to be fed. So the OP started feeding. The nurse chose that particular moment to call them into the ward to start the paperwork. Sod's law in action.

How many stories have there been on MN about people having to answer the door to the postman or whoever, with a baby stick to their boob? Loads.

So the OP asked if either they could wait till she had finished feeding (told no due to it delaying the op meaning that her DS would lose his 'spot' in theatre), so the general assumption would surely be that if baby is bf and has already started the feed, baby goes with mum until feed is finished and then be taken off the ward.

I can't see what else the OP could possibly have done. She couldn't have done any more, and obviously this hospital ISN'T as bf friendly as it wishes to be if it's going for some award or something about being the most bf friendly hospital in London.

And of they ARE going for that award, then why is it wrong for the OP to email them to let them know that actually, one of their policies ISN'T bf friendly, which gives them an opportunity to make a change to the 'rules' that are not bf friendly.

I can't see the issue with that, tbh. And I think the personal digs aimed at Star are out of order tbh.

Incidentally, the hospital did say no!

Email, by all means, but the nurse was surely following her own agenda, which encompasses the confort and safety and schedule of ALL kids on the ward!

Or merry op could have handed the baby over for 10 minutes soooooo uttterly not an issue.

We're talking a one off 10 minutes folks,if any baby has never had to wait for 5/10 minutes by the time he is 7 months he is one pampered baby.

Yes, hardly going to scar the baby for life!

No merry people are not saying that. They are saying that she could have left her baby for a few minutes. Yes they might have screamed, but her aunt was there to deal with that, even if it meant going outside with the baby so no one else was disturbed.

Why should "most people" know her DS has autism?

MerrymouthyCow - I agree

And to those who say why couldn't she hand the baby over for 10 minutes - how did she know it would be 10 minutes? It could have been 10 minutes but it could have been a lot longer than that.

As I just said , there is a world of difference between leaving a fussy baby who needs a feed but can wait and one who has already started a feed and is forced to stop after a couple of sucks. The later leads to a whole new level of crying. Better not to have started it than to have started and then forced to stop.

If you have a young baby or toddler, try giving them a drink of milk, letting them have two sips, then take it away and see their reaction.

My DS3 is 2yo now, and due to his severe allergies, his diet is 80% amino acid based hypoallergenic milk replacement. He is STILL demand fed. And I can tell you now that if I tried this with him, he would go utterly APESHIT.

I would have done EXACTLY the same as Star in this situation. As a previous poster said, a bf mother and their baby are classed as a dyad, which means that they cannot be separated. In UK law. So I wouldn't have 'assumed' that the rules applied to a bf baby under a year old.

The 'dyad' thing is the same reason that a bf baby under a year old will not be separated from their Mother even for access to their father if the parents are separated.

If even a Family Court refused to put a court order in place for contact without me present until DS3 was 12mo, why on earth would I 'assume' that anywhere else would separate a bf baby under a year from it's main food source?

The 'other' food eaten is irrelevant - the baby is bf, and under a year old. Ergo, the baby stays with me as it's food source.

If Star is wrong, then so am I!

And no, I wouldn't have thought to inform the hospital beforehand - to me, it is just common sense that you can't separate a demand fed bf baby from it's Mother while they are under a year old, so it genuinely wouldn't have occurred to me.

In 15 years, having 4 DC's, all demand bf, three of those DC's having SN's, physical disabilities and medical needs warranting many, MANY hospital visits, day ops, inpatient treatments, have my local hospital EVER had any issue about me bringing a younger, bf sibling along with me.

So it just wouldn't cross my mind that I would NEED to phone ahead about something like this!

Really couldn't give a stuff Big,it's a one off.If op is that worried her baby would melt experiencing a broken feed for the first time op should have fed said baby an hour earlier followed by a pouch,no baby I know would have needed anything after that amount of food for a very long time or op could have expressed some milk into a cup.Either way it's a non thread.

And that's MY take on this.